


Failsafe

by Prochytes



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:39:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was never just the one contingency plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failsafe

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 1x08 “They Keep Killing Suzie”, 2x12 “Fragments”, and DW “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End”. Written for dark_fest on LJ in 2010.

Lady Lazarus managed it one year in every ten. Suzie Costello feels that lacked ambition.

 

There was never just the one contingency plan. Suzie’s schemes nestle throughout the Hub like Easter Eggs – blasphemy very much intended. The special beauty of this one lies in the timing. (Suzie dodges an inelegant kick, and blocks a punch.)   

 

The temporal backwash of Toshiko’s experimental Time Bubble tech releases energies all but indistinguishable from those that fuelled the Resurrection Gauntlet.  It had stretched even Suzie to feign disinterest while Tosh gushed on about this coincidence, common sense lapped as so often by that galloping brain. You could see why UNIT thought that Earth would be safer with Tosh in a cell, and only her own piss for company. Installing a Rift Capacitor to funnel those energies into the Morgue lockers if the Time Bubble should ever be activated had been a fiddly afternoon’s work. But, as the sequel has shown, entirely worth it. (Elbow-smash...  y/n? Suzie decides to keep that up her sleeve. So to speak.)

 

Timing, that was the key. A resurrection triggered by Tosh’s final failsafe was bound to happen while the Fellowship of the Coat were too busy to do anything about it. When Suzie entered the main Hub, hands still bloody from  introducing Ianto’s skull to her locker’s drawer (head wounds always, always, bleed like buggery; Suzie has ruined more than one blouse that way), the first thing she saw was a time-stopped Dalek. _QED_.

 

In fact, the situation is even better than she could have anticipated. (Suzie falls back a little, milking the advantage of her long arms. When Browning said that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, he wasn’t thinking about a beat-down.) Tosh, on whom she had been relying to stabilize her condition, is not here. Perhaps she is out in the field; more likely, she already lies below amongst Suzie’s bunkmates. Ever the good little soldier, dying up to Jack’s expectations.

 

But that really isn’t a problem. Right now, control of the Rift Manipulator affords leverage over a much more promising resurrectionist than Toshiko. If Suzie has interpreted the Manipulator’s readings correctly, it is currently channelling Rift energies into space. (Via Ealing. Suzie has decided not to waste time trying to understand that bit. At least it isn’t Splott.) The focus of the energies is nothing other than the fabled TARDIS, second-biggest of all Jack’s so-called secrets. Suzie’s breath had caught in her throat as she examined the web of forces it was spinning around the Earth, each filament a perfection that many scientists more moral than she would kill to spend a lifetime contemplating.

 

Why does this shitty little world have to burn, before such beauty deigns to visit it? Why is a bargaining chip all that it is good enough to be? No matter. The Doctor will fix Suzie, or she will drag the whole planet down into the dark to join her. And if Jack chooses to get stroppy about it, well... trussed-up tea-boys make for great collateral.

 

 There is still one fly in this otherwise pleasing ointment. But Suzie has always known what to do with flies.

 

Gwen must have expended all of the Hub’s ammo on that Dalek. Doubtless she had reasoned that if the first three hundred rounds did not work, the three hundred and first might buck the trend. It was a wonder she had never been headhunted by UNIT.

 

This made the last struggle for control of the Hub a fistfight. A fistfight which has turned out, Suzie must admit, to be more evenly-matched than she had expected. Say what you would about Gwen Cooper: the preachy little cow could hit. How did Jack so infallibly spot that vein of violence? What glittered out at him from behind all those starched cuffs and demure fringes? Even Tosh, who wouldn’t have said boo to a goose, could have emptied a clip into one without turning a hair.

 

But, like many people blessed with an effective knockout punch, Gwen knows how to connect, not how to miss. That, in fact, is former PC Cooper in a nutshell. The conceit pleases Suzie, though not as much as taking advantage of Gwen’s weary stumble after her latest failure to land a blow by kneeing her in the stomach. Gwen folds, staggers, and leaves herself wide-open for the elbow-smash (timing again) that finally sends her to the floor of Jack’s office – the oh-so-symbolic site of her Last Stand. Suzie is not sure why Gwen fled here, of all places, when the tide of battle started to turn against her. Perhaps she hoped the symbolism would lend her strength. Suzie places no faith in symbols, herself. That would be why she is the one still vertical.

 

“N...no. I... I won’t let...”

 

So,  Jack had only supplied the basic course of Self-Defence, but had moved straight to the Harkness Masterclass in Empty Threats. Suzie straddles Gwen, wincing a little at the flex of her own bruises, and traps the hands.

 

“Not your call to make, Gwen Cooper. In case you haven’t noticed,” Suzie leans forward to whisper in Gwen’s ear, “there’s an old sheriff in town.”

 

Gwen swallows, and twists her neck away. “I’m sorry.”

 

“For what?” Suzie plants a kiss, and then another, on the soft throat that tenses at her lips. She wonders why she never thought of doing this before.

 

“I... I hoped that I could beat you fair and square. I can’t.“

 

Now Suzie bears down length to length on that mastered body, Gwen’s curves grinding close against her own, and this... this...

 

This definitely wasn’t in the script.

 

“So beating you foul and crooked will have to do.”

 

Ice settles on Suzie’s spine, as Gwen looks steadily up at her.

 

“You’re not the only one to have fall-back plans, you know. I don’t need to stop you, Suzie. I just need to lock you down until Ianto works himself loose, or help arrives. Do you like my perfume? I got it out especially. From the safe.”

 

Suzie’s shoulders slump at the sensation of her last shreds of control slipping away.  “The pheromone spray. Very clever. Very... _me_.”

 

She sees Gwen’s flinch. She savours it for the tiny victory it is. But then there is only the entanglement of hands and lips and thighs and trying not to feel the reel of the Earth as it totters home through the sidereal dark, groping blindly at the little blue box that dances before it, always one wayward footfall behind wonder.

 

  


FINIS  


 

 

 


End file.
